Pedro Olea - El bosque del lobo aka The Ancines Woods (1971)

This colorful horror tale begins with Benito Freire (Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez), a peddler and trader of charms and fabrics in a small village in northern Spain. He spends his spare time as a wolf man, murdering women and burying their corpses in the Ancines Woods. Only a forest dwelling witch knows his transformation is caused by epileptic seizures. The Abbot (Antonio Casas) is called on to form a team to investigate, and local farmers set out wolf traps in an effort to halt the harrowing murders.





If cinema is about moving your mind to another time or space, then this film is a masterpiece. Today, when you see an historical movie (at least an Spanish one), you can't help perceiving it just like several xxi century guys acting disguised like people of ancient times, but when you watch this movie you are literary moved 100 years ago, far way from your everyday life, and you can feel very well the darkness of these times, when the barrier among superstition and reality was confuse and someone like the mean character of the film, a miserable man unable to control his criminal impulses, could be confused with a "lobisome" (werewolf). In the other hand, on the contrary of most of American films, there is not unnecessary violence on this one and even when Benito Freire (the werewolf) is an assassin, as the film is going by you can just feel sorrow for him. (IMDB comment)





Un enfermo epilptico que ha crecido en un ambiente subdesarrollado y supersticioso acaba considerado por todos, incluso por l mismo, como un ”hombre lobo”. Buhonero de oficio, acompaa a los que emigran a otras tierras, y una vez en el bosque los asesina sin que nadie se entere.





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